How Living In The Moment Affects Your Mental Health and How to Be More Present

Learning to be more present is one of the most high-milage mindset shifts you can make to become a happier, healthier you. This practice gives you the power to feel more at peace and more in control. Stress? Anxiety? Depression? This exercise in self-development is for you…

Learning to be present and live in the moment can help you feel more connected, more in control, more energized, and more like yourself.

Read on to discover why it’s worthwhile to become more present in your daily life—and to learn how to do that.

What Does it Mean to Be Present?

Being present and living in the moment means letting go of all thoughts about the past and the future for the benefit of getting the most out of every moment and therefore, every day.

We are so used to our minds wandering all over the place all day long that we barely notice anymore! Being present means intentionally becoming aware of your thoughts and choosing to continually bring them back to what’s happening right in front of you.

What’s the Benefit of Learning to be Present?

Learning to be a more present person has many positive effects. When you are constantly thinking about the past and the future, you’re more likely to feel stress, anxiety and depression. You’re also more like to miss out on the enjoyment you could be finding from your day-to-day life and you’re probably a much less effective person in all your tasks.

Being present allows you to feel grounded and centered, enjoy things more deeply, and be more effective at every task.

(Bonus: When you’re more effective at everything you do, you’re less likely to feel anxious or depressed over your tasks because you know you’ve done a good job and will continue to do a good job.)

Where do we go when we’re not present?

I’m sure we can all relate to the experience of driving in the car, and suddenly being “snapped back to reality” when we miss a turn or end up somewhere we didn’t mean to be. Where do we go during those lost minutes?

We can get so deeply immersed in the world of our minds that we genuinely get lost in another reality for a while and abandon the body that is still here doing something important…like driving a car.

So where do we go that is so enticing that we’re willing to lose minutes or hours, even days of our life to go there?

There are only two possible places we go when we’re not present: either visiting the past or imagining the future.

Take a second to think about this: Is there any event you can think of right now that didn’t either happen in the past or in the future? Okay, there’s one. It’s whatever is happening now. And now. And now.

Every time we let our minds wander and they start replaying conversations, or imagining things had gone differently, or dwelling on the events that led to an outcome…we’re visiting the past—a place that it turns out, you can only visit inside your head.

Every time that we start thinking about what we’re going to say when we run in to so-and-so, or worrying about when we’re gonna make time to go to the gym, we’re visiting the future—again, somewhere that is only possible to visit inside your very own brain.  

If you are not focused on the present, it is because you are either dwelling on the past, or imagining the future. Our minds can create infinite versions of those two places but none of them are reality—they only exist inside your thoughts.

Why do our minds wander into the past and future?

What is it about dwelling on the past or future that is so compelling to our minds? If you’re interested in personal development, this is an important self-reflection to consider.

Dwelling on the past or future is one of the many ways our brains try to make us feel like we’re in control of our lives.

Human beings are hard-wired to feel safe when things are predictable and within our control and losing that feeling of control is terrifying. Think about how many tools and systems we’ve created to help in our endeavor to always be in control: clocks, schedules, calendars, savings accounts, back-up plans, contingency plans and Plans C-F.

Unfortunately, no matter how much we learn to control the few things we can control, there will always be some things that happen in our lives that we have absolutely no say over.

But our minds have a hard time accepting that.

That’s why they devote so much time and energy to replaying past events, trying to think of how they might have gone differently or how to figure out why they happened the way they did. It’s also why we spend so much time thinking about the future and trying to ensure that everything will go “according to plan.”

Although it feels like thinking about something is the way to have control over it, that’s not true.

Instead we end up feeling much more overwhelmed by the burden of the events in our mind than we ever would by the event itself.

You Are Not Your Thoughts

Hear me out… The first time I ever heard the phrase “you are not your thoughts,” I simultaneously thought “duh,” and “that’s dumb.”

This is one of those catch phrases that has started making its rounds on the internet in self-development circles but is rarely actually explained in a way that makes any sense.

So let me try to clear it up…

You’ve been you since long before you can remember.

You are an entity. You are more than the collection of blood, bone, skin etc. that make up your body. When you were a baby, you didn’t have any meaningful thoughts in the same way you do now because you didn’t have language to create coherent streams of thought. Does that mean that when you were a baby, you weren’t YOU? Of course not.

Thought Experiment #1

Imagine you had been adopted at birth into a different family with completely different circumstances; different country, different socioeconomic standing, different number of siblings, different kind of schooling, different religion…and all of those factors led you to have a very different outlook and understanding of the world than you do now.

Would that mean that you were no longer YOU? Would you have morphed into a totally different entity than the one you were at birth and the one you identify as now?

No, you would still be you. Just a you with very different thought patterns than those the current version of you has.

All of this to say: YOU are obviously something separate from your thoughts.

If you’re not your thoughts, who are you?

Great, were you just stripped of an identity? If you are not your thoughts, who are you? This might sound like a ridiculous question if you’ve never gone down this rabbit hole before, but bear with me…I’m gonna keep it super simple!

You are the entity who is aware of your thoughts.

Thought Experiment #2

Without trying too hard, think about a bird. What color is the bird? How big are the bird’s wings? Got it? A bird. Awesome.

So….are YOU that bird? Is that bird you? No. Obviously not. But you’re fully aware that you just thought of a bird, right? Who thought of the bird? You.

You are the witnesser of every thought that goes through your head.

(For a much more detailed look at how to identify “you” from the thoughts in your head, I highly recommend the book The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. But for our purposes, this is enough of a general understanding.)

“reality” is JUST your perception of what is going on

Since every thing that you are aware of in the world only enters your reality by being experienced by one of your senses and then interpreted by your thoughts, then this one last cliché phrase is in fact, also true: The only reality that exists for you is the one you perceive to be real.

THOUGHT EXPERIMENT #3

Imagine you have a dog. And you love your dog SO much. You feel like you know this creature better than any other. You’re familiar with every little sound, every tail wag, every nose twitch.

But as familiar as you are with this animal, will you ever BE your dog? No. You can touch your dog, you can talk to and look at and smell and hear your dog. But you’ll never be your dog. You can’t integrate their “beingness” into your “beingness”…your dog’s only existence for you is through the lens that is YOU. Through your senses, and then through your perception of those senses—your thoughts.

Someone else might meet your dog and because of their past experiences and personality, they think huh, that’s an ugly dog. And then your dog growls at the person and they now think, “and it’s mean, too!”

Guess what? As much as you will argue that they are just wrong, it doesn’t matter. Because your dog exists in their mind just as concretely as your dog exists in your mind, and yet they’re two completely different dogs.

ThE Effect of Not Being Present oN your MEntal Health

So, we are walking around with all of this power that we may not even realize we have to literally create the reality we live in. In your reality your dog is the best, right?

When we stray away from the present it is with good intentions. It’s our attempt to make sense of what has happened and to ensure that we will be happy with what’s to come.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t realize the cost of that perceived control.

Many of us are squandering the enormous amount of power we have by creating a personal reality that is full of stress, anxiety, and depression.

How often would you say that you are intentionally living in the present moment and you are experiencing it fully—not kicking yourself over something dumb you said that morning or worrying about a deadline at work? If you’ve never stopped to assess how often your thoughts are resting in the present, I challenge you to start noticing today.

I’m guessing you’ll be shocked at how often you catch your mind drifting away to another time and place.

Not Living in the Moment and Your Depression

If you are a person who tends to let their mind wander into the past, you may be familiar with experiencing depressive episodes, if not full-blown depression. That may be what’s brought you to this self-development journey in the first place.

Allowing your mind to dwell in the past is bringing the past with you into your reality all the time—like a heavy package you’re determined not to set down.

By replaying an event over and over in your mind, you are making your reality one of loss, mourning, regret, shame, or disappointment.

No matter what past event you are visiting in your mind, or exactly how you’re turning it over and over to inspect it at different angles, the fact remains the same: that event is over. In this moment, it does not actually exist.

The only place the past continues to live a shadow of a life is in you mind while you’re letting it camp out there. And by giving it this real estate in your brain, you’re also allowing space for all of the attached emotions that come with it. In this way, not being present or living in the moment is making it easy for depression to creep in.

Not Living in the Moment and Your Anxiety

On the other hand, if you tend to let your mind wander into the future, you may be more familiar with anxiety.

If you allow your mind to project itself out into the future which simply doesn’t exist in this moment, your mind will get overwhelmed trying to work through the infinite possibilities of “what might be.”

What a ridiculously unfair job we’re asking our brains to do since there is no solution. At no point will your brain say “AH! I figured it out. I’m 100% sure I know exactly how everything is going to play out for the rest of your life, I can stop thinking about it now.”

If you allow it to, your brain will continue working on trying to find a solution to every single potential problem you throw at it—indefinitely.

Not only is this exhausting and incredibly unfair to yourself, but eventually your brain is bound to come up with a scenario that is extremely painful and uncomfortable to imagine.

Not being present and worrying about the future is bound to make you feel anxious because as we discussed earlier, we hate to feel out of control. Unfortunately, your brain will never be able to control the future no matter how hard it tries.

The Present Is Where You’ll Find Peace

Although we spend so much of our time swimming around in these mental versions of the past and future that exist in our brains, those worlds are, in fact, nothing but thoughts.

The only “time” that truly exists in any moment is the present moment. The past is gone; you will never physically exist there again. The future doesn’t exist yet and is just a construct of what we’re able to imagine.

The present moment however, is as real as anything can ever be. You can see it, feel it, taste it, smell it, and hear it. Experience it.

Control it.

This is one of the most freeing truths of the world. The only moment that ever actually exists, is the one you’re experiencing right now.

If you are able to pull your mind away from its projections into the past and future, and allow it to rest on the very real moment that is this one, you will feel an instant peace.

THIS is life. THIS is reality.

What does it feel like to stay In the Moment all the time?

Imagine if you were able to stay present in every moment of every day. You would be spending 100% of your mental energy engaged in making each moment the most fulfilling and worthwhile moment possible.

Being able to stay present is a skill that can instantly relieve you of stress, fear, regret, anxiety, and many more of the most painful emotions we spend our days trying to ignore. This exercise in mindfulness can sky rocket your personal development and mental health.

Being present allows you to do everything to the best of your ability. Meaning, you begin having fewer things to regret and  fewer things to worry about, because you know that you’re doing your best—you’re controlling what you can control—always.

Focus on what you’re doing—not the results of what you’re doing

If we can agree that when you are fully present in what you’re doing you will be more effective and efficient, then training ourselves to do that must be the key to being a more productive person.

This means that instead of focusing on (stressing about) the end result of what we’re working on like we normally do, we need to be willing to let go of that false feeling of control long enough to immerse our minds in the actual doing of the task, and trust that the results will follow.

What if what I’m doing sucks?

A very fair question at this point is, “Why would I want to be fully aware of what I’m doing when the thing I’m doing sucks?”

Let’s say for example that you hate your job. Every day you spend your time day dreaming about the second you’ll get to clock out and head home. Well, there are two important ideas here.

The Alternative To Being Present Is Wandering To Painful Places

Although it’s tempting to believe that the only way you’re making it through your days is by not thinking about it, I would argue that by not thinking about it you’re actually making the experience much more uncomfortable.

8 hours is a long time to let your mind wander in and out of the past and future getting more and more depressed or anxious about what it’s imagining there each day.

Becoming Hyper-Focused On Any Task Makes It More Satisfying

The goal of staying present in a task doesn’t have to be to fall in love with that task. The goal is just to stop hating your work or otherwise spending your days feeling miserable because there is a simple way to feel better.

Why spend 8 hours a day feeling miserable when you have the power to spend those days feeling good?

By becoming hyper-focused on what you’re doing, you’re able to become involved in the intricacies of the task you may have never noticed before or that you wrote off because they seem “dumb” or unworthy of your attention. Well sure, they may be menial and you may be cut out for much bigger things, but stubbornly dwelling on that is only adding to your unhappiness—no one else’s.

If you allow yourself to invest in the details of a task, no matter how menial, you’ll find that you’re able to find patterns, solutions, and potential improvements that leave you feeling like you’ve accomplished something at the end of the day.

How do I plan for the future if I’m not supposed to think about it?

Set yourself up for success. At some point in your day or in your week, the “what” that you are doing IS to objectively look at “what” else your day or week will consist of to keep you on track for your goals.

When you are making a schedule, you are fully present and focused on that activity just as you would be on any other task. In this way you are able to plan your time in an even more well-thought out way and accomplish every task with greater efficiency.

Just think of how much you can accomplish and the self improvement you’ll see by living this way!

How do I become more present?

1. Notice What Each of Your Five Senses is Experiencing

This is one of the easiest ways to immerse yourself in the moment that is happening around you.

What do you see in the room around you? What sounds are happening in the room and from down the hall or out the window? What does it feel like to have your butt on your seat or your hands on your desk?

Just take stock of what is happening in your surroundings and how your body and self are interacting with the environment. You’ll be surprised how much you weren’t even aware of just seconds before.

2. Focus On Your Breath

This doesn’t have to be weird or over the top. Just take a send to be aware of the fact that your body is still breathing for you. This is such an easy way to connect your thoughts back to your body, something we do surprisingly infrequently throughout the day.

By feeling your breath move in and out of your body you are taking a moment to remember that “you” are still here, wherever here is.

3. Focus On the Inside of Your Body

This may sound a little strange. But we have this pretty incredible ability to put our focus into any nook or cranny of our own body and become hyper-aware of what it feels like in there.

You can feel your energy in every bit of your body and by just taking a moment to focus on it, you are allowing your brain to settle somewhere comfortable, familiar, and most importantly—present.

4. Ground Yourself by Looking at The Sky or Putting Your Hands and Feet on the Ground

As I mentioned earlier, when we get caught up not being present, we are often accosted with feelings of anxiety or depression. In order to shake this uncomfortable energy and return to the energy of the present moment, sometimes we just need to get our bearings.

Instead of letting your energy feel like it’s floating up around your head (anxiety) or burying you under the ground (depression), you can consciously return it to a normal state by looking at the sky or putting your hands or feet on the natural ground. This may sound weird, but we’re energetic beings. And allowing your energy to be reset by the always-calm energy of the earth, we’re just letting the ground do its job—to ground us.

I hope this article helps you to become closer to the person you want to be. If you found this helpful and you look forward to using these tips to improve your mental health and further your self-development, please share it with your friends!